Today was a slow start for a variety of reasons, so forgive me for this shortish Cram Session. I know you have it in you.

OK, so Duke can play on the road. This morning at FanHouse, Sportz Assassin (which remains the best blog pseudonym ever; way better than "PostmanE" ever was) makes the point that people criticize Duke for never playing "true" road games. It's true. Rare is the preseason road game Duke doesn't play on a neutral floor. But as Sportz also says, when Duke does play true road games, it wins them. Such was the case last night at Purdue, when the Blue Devils -- led by the two sweatiest blonde dudes on the planet, Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler -- murdered Purdue on the boards and never really allowed the Boilermakers into the game. For Matt Painter's Purdue squad, last night was proof that potential doesn't equal national prominence. At least not yet.

The game was OK, but man, that was a lot of orange. Hi-def TV is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It's revolutionized what we should expect from our television experiences. It's introduced us to a wide array of visual phenomena, like Lou Holtz's face. Generally, I love it. But last night, watching Illinois play Clemson in an arena filled with Orange Krush t-shirts, I won't lie: my eyes kinda hurt. And I didn't even sit four inches in front of the TV like I usually do. In any case, one retina-burning hue proved superior to the other, as Clemson crawled back from an eight-point first-half deficit and escaped as Illinois failed to put up a last-second shot. Bruce Weber was not pleased. Mercifully, Weber wasn't wearing his lucky jacket.

The rest: Iowa's Andrew Brommer bricked a one-and-one with a chance to tie in the last seconds, and the Hawkeyes fell to Boston College 57-55; Miami's Jack McClinton, wearer of played-out arm sleeve and scorer extraordinaire, retaliated to a scrum by asking Anthony Carter what five fingers said to the face, and Ohio State realized it had the remedy; and Florida, Marquette, Memphis, and Notre Dame rolled like such schools are wont to do. "Wont." That's a funny word, wont. Overused, yes, but still I always enjoy it.

Related: Big Ten Basketball, ACC Basketball, Cram Session